


Prometheus

by iimpavid



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, M/M, Mad Science, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-24
Updated: 2020-11-24
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:27:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27703457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iimpavid/pseuds/iimpavid
Summary: The Ruby 7 has a song stuck in her head.
Relationships: Buddy Aurinko/Vespa Ilkay, Peter Nureyev/Juno Steel
Comments: 3
Kudos: 23





	Prometheus

The garage is filled with void-dark and the faintest glimmers of silver that make up the music. Not the soft pulse of human humming but whistling shards of a melody flitting through the dark. 

The Ruby 7 gets lonely. She’s never been much of an introvert, not one for downtime. She sings to fill the space— and because there’s something stuck in her head. Pulsing and bright, it’s not unlike human singing but faster. Fast enough to keep up with _her_. To keep itself held in the forefront of her perception and add depth to the music she makes to pass the time. To her sensors, there are two of her singing, herself and this thing stuck in her head, and every tone is lonely.

It isn’t long before something answers back. 

The vibration comes through the thin conductor that is pseudo-atmosphere— it’s barely a sound. It should be thin, though, after traveling the plaster walls wires ducts grates empty air in between the Ruby... and what answers her. Not any sound, a voice. 

The _voice_ is familiar. The shuffling thunk of footsteps and numb fumbling with door panels is _not familiar_. 

These hands should be more dexterous than this after a lifetime of delicate wiring, these feet should be surer after decades spent building anti-personnel mines.

The pulse stuck in her head pounds— it is not painful or anxious. It is _anticipating_ . It is _hopeful_ . It is _so proud of itself_ that the Ruby has to engage her heat sink to keep herself from burning out. There is so much pride in her, so much power in her, as much as was planned but more than _she_ expected, and it is focused toward one purpose. 

It’s a long way from the tiny refrigerated closet the Carte Blanche uses for cold storage cargo to the garage. Yards and yards of metal grate flooring and locked doors and one half-flight of stairs-- falling off it takes off skin like a cheese grater. But the shambling corpse hums their way to the Ruby’s side nonetheless. 

The cold is no object. 

The loneliness is no object. 

They are singular in their purpose. 

A frost-limned hand reaches indigo fingertips toward the verdant hood of the Ruby 7. The music peaks in a crescendo and when they touch her: lightning strikes.

__

It is a perfectly normal morning although few of the Carte Blanche’s crew keep hours that might leave them described as “morning people” things are, nonetheless, uneventful. Jet showers, dresses, meditates. He has little to occupy his thoughts so early in the day but good habits demand consistency and so he sits in the middle of his cabin’s floor until the waveform of his thought nearly levels out. Then: time for breakfast, for jovian tea from the pitcher in the refrigerator, for sysnav checks to make sure the ship has not drifted off course while he slept. 

Jet realizes that “normal” may have been too generous of an assessment of the morning. Juno glowers, hunched over his coffee cup and ignoring the toast he had picked from the mountain in the middle of the table. Another “poetry night” come and gone, maybe, and Jet wonders, cruelly, if this will be the last. He distrusts the thief. Buddy is drawn in a way that suggests a bad pain day. An assumption reinforced by how Vespa hovers: pouring Buddy’s “tea” (consisting almost entirely of whiskey), handing Buddy her pill case, things which Buddy is perfectly capable of doing for herself. That she lets Vespa do them for her, even though they are not alone, is telling. Vespa herself is withdrawn, more in her head than usual. Rita has not yet emerged; he hopes her sleep was untroubled and dreamless. The thief is, if they are at all lucky, still unconscious in the storage closet Vespa cannibalized for an infirmary. He clearly monopolized enough of Juno’s focus as things stand.

Jet distrusts the thief and it colors his opinions. He turns this knowledge over in his mind and sets it aside-- _not_ away, only to the left of center so that he can pick it up later and see if he can sand its edges down. But that is work for later, this evening, when he has finished his day and can focus.

The ship’s vitals do not reflect the general distress of her crew. She holds the course steadily as she had the night before. Her engines thrum. 

The ship is inanimate. Jet’s tendency to personify her is a typical human impulse … and he is still certain all the same that she has a will of her own, one with which he hopes to align. Something which is very hard to do when the garage and cargo holds are reporting over-night blackouts that damaged even the alarm system. Without damage to critical systems, it would be hard to believe this was anything but a run-of-the-mill power surge but Jet knows every inch of the Carte Blanche: her electrical systems are equipped to survive solar flares. Something is wrong.

Jet restrains the urge to sigh and makes his way back to the galley to inform Buddy of the anomaly.

**Author's Note:**

> All credit for this AU goes to voidteatime.


End file.
